In 2021, I thought a lot about how I can raise a good person

Published on 2 December 2021

When I was pregnant, I didn’t ask to find out the sex of my baby at the pre-birth scans. But of course I couldn’t help speculating what I would have. 

I soon found myself hoping for a boy. One of the reasons was that, deep down, I believed it would be easier to raise a male. Because I definitely did not like the thought of having to help my own child navigate the same fears and discriminations I’d had to deal with due to my gender.

My son is now 6 years old. We’ve made it through ‘the early years’, where your first focus is keeping your child alive, then, for a fair while after that, it’s about teaching them the basics of being a human. So, lately, I find myself thinking less about ensuring his survival and more about the actual nuances of parenting him. And I’m realising that bringing up a boy – especially bringing up a boy in the right way – may not be simpler after all.

The day that news of Sarah Everard’s murder broke, I was furious and bitter and sad. I talked to my husband into the night about the invisible weight that women carry. The almost constant low-level terror we live with and the keys-in-hand hypervigilance that we have to exercise daily so we can exist in the world.

And then, beyond that, to the everyday slights we come up against; the sexist comments we smile through to avoid conflict; the secrets we keep and tears we suppress to seem ‘ok’ with being sidelined. 

I told him I felt renewed gladness that we didn’t have a little girl, who would have had to learn how to live with all this.

We’d never talked about it properly before. Though he’s the gentlest man I know, he’d had no idea how deep all that went. 

But now he knows. And I’ve decided I want my boy to one day know all that too.

Because I’ve come to understand how important it is that we raise our white, middle-class son to be aware of his privilege and know what other people – not only females, but anyone different to him – face. A compassionate ally who cares and who knows the impact his behaviours can have. Though we won’t need to show him how to protect himself as a woman, we need to show him what he can do to protect others as a man.

So we are doing more. We take every opportunity to show him the power of kindness and empathy. We give him space to feel his feelings and we invite him to imagine what others are feeling too. We point out the difference between facts and opinions and teach respect.

When he parrots stereotypes he’s picked up at school – “girls just giggle”, and “boys aren’t supposed to get upset” – it’s tempting to just tell him he’s wrong. But instead we talk through why he might be saying those things, tell him our opinion is that those kind of assumptions aren’t fair, and then leave him to figure out the rest for himself.

When he and his classmates became keen on a playground game that involved physical contact, and suddenly he was not up for playing anymore, we talked about the importance of setting boundaries and observing the boundaries set by others too. That it’s everyone’s right to decide what they are and aren’t comfortable with and to say “no, I don’t like that”.

There are of course some things that he’s too young to hear, and issues too complicated for him to understand. Things we must continue to shield him from for now. But as he grows, we plan to continue to be appropriately honest with him about the injustices in the world, and the difference that he can make by being the best version of himself possible.

It requires us to be attentive. To think one step ahead. To check ourselves when we fall back on the parenting styles we unconsciously picked up during our own childhoods, and instead forge our own, better path.

In other words, it is not at all easy. But I think we’re doing well. At the end of the school year, my son received a special award in recognition of the fact that he has “a good understanding of other people’s feelings and is very considerate.” We’re very proud – of him, but also of ourselves.

We know that these thoughts and opinions that we help him solidify today are forming the foundations of whatever and whoever he’ll become. And now my greatest hope for my hoped-for boy is that, if we raise him right, he’ll make this world better for everyone in his own, however-small way.